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The Savings and Loan Crisis: Lessons from a Regulatory Failure sets the record straight about what actually happened to our banking institutions in the 1980s. As is documented by the highly respected and diverse group of former regulators, scholars and practitioners contributing to this book, the collapse of this industry was caused by a confluence of adverse economic conditions and misguided regulatory decisions. Poorly designed deposit insurance, faulty supervision, and restrictions on investments prevented savings and loans from adapting to a changing financial marketplace. Unable to use financial innovations, savings and loans could not hedge interest rate and credit risks. These factors blocked portfolio diversification and lay at the root of the crisis. The savings and loan crisis was an accident, but it was an avoidable one. Most of the factors responsible for causing and exacerbating the industry's problems were preventable, as is made clear in this volume.
This book also provides an insider's view of the transformation of the financial services industry in the United States since the 1980s: how the managers and owners make decisions about product offerings and investments; how the regulators monitor performance and enforce the rules; and how Congress and the Administration influence and are influenced by the financial services industry. Lastly, it focuses attention on the lessons that should have been learned from this difficult period in the history of U.S. banking, and that should help prevent future banking crises everywhere.

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Closed-End Investment Companies (CEICs) were the dominant form of investment companies in the United States during the early part of this century, but interest in them declined after the 1929 stock market crash. Since 1985, however, there has been a significant revival of interest in CEICs. A substantial amount of academic research has focused on the nature of closed-end funds, discounts and premiums, and on the share price behavior of these firms, which often results in the prices differing from the net asset value of the shares. This book is designed for the academic researcher interested in CEICs and the practitioner interested in using CEICs as an investment vehicle. The authors summarize the evolution of CEICs, present the factors that cause CEIC shares to trade at different levels from their net asset values, provide a complete survey of the academic literature on this topic, and summarize the current state of research on CEICs.

Click on the Google Preview image above to read some pages of this book!

The Savings and Loan Crisis: Lessons from a Regulatory Failure sets the record straight about what actually happened to our banking institutions in the 1980s. As is documented by the highly respected and diverse group of former regulators, scholars and practitioners contributing to this book, the collapse of this industry was caused by a confluence of adverse economic conditions and misguided regulatory decisions. Poorly designed deposit insurance, faulty supervision, and restrictions on investments prevented savings and loans from adapting to a changing financial marketplace. Unable to use financial innovations, savings and loans could not hedge interest rate and credit risks. These factors blocked portfolio diversification and lay at the root of the crisis. The savings and loan crisis was an accident, but it was an avoidable one. Most of the factors responsible for causing and exacerbating the industry's problems were preventable, as is made clear in this volume.
This book also provides an insider's view of the transformation of the financial services industry in the United States since the 1980s: how the managers and owners make decisions about product offerings and investments; how the regulators monitor performance and enforce the rules; and how Congress and the Administration influence and are influenced by the financial services industry. Lastly, it focuses attention on the lessons that should have been learned from this difficult period in the history of U.S. banking, and that should help prevent future banking crises everywhere.